The chocolate is “flexibility and creativity”; the raisins are “freedom and autonomy” and the peanuts are “standards and accountability” In the early Eighties, we enjoyed a diet of chocolate raisins, but we felt we needed something else. In the Nineties we were served nothing but peanuts.

Then came the primary strategy, which offers us something new: “chocolate- covered nuts”.

If as a young teacher you have never tasted chocolate: beware - too much will make you sick.

For teachers who remember the days of chocolate raisins: beware - the talk about the recently rediscovered value of drama, the arts and flexibility may sound familiar, but bite with care. The sweets may look the same, but there is a nut, not a raisin at the centre of it.

Paul Martin

Headteacher

The Holt primary school

Swallow Avenue

Skellingthorpe, Lincoln